Donald Trump has signed an executive order that authorises aggressive economic sanctions against the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel.

The order grants the US president broad powers to impose asset freezes and travel bans against ICC staff and their family members if the US determines that they are involved in efforts to investigate or prosecute citizens of the US and certain allies.

The hostile action against the ICC comes in response to the court’s decision in November to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

In the order, Trump said the ICC had “abused its power” by issuing the warrants which he claimed had “set a dangerous precedent” that endangered US citizens and its military personnel.

“This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” he added.

Neither the US nor Israel are member states of the ICC, a permanent court of last resort for the prosecution of individuals accused of atrocities. In his order, Trump argued the court must “respect the decision” of countries “not to subject their personnel to the ICC’s jurisdiction”.

Trump said the US “will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions” including by blocking property and assets and suspending entry into the US of ICC officials and their family members.

It was unclear if the Trump administration would announce the names of specific individuals targeted by the sanctions. ICC officials have prepared for sanctions to impact senior figures at the court including its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.

On Thursday, ICC officials were working late into the night awaiting news from Washington about the scope of the sanctions and which of its officials would be individually targeted.

The signing of the order comes days after Trump met with the Israeli prime minister in the Oval Office. Netanyahu was still in Washington on Thursday, when he spent some of the day meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Last week, a bill that would have imposed sweeping sanctions against the ICC was stalled in the Senate after Democrats refused to support the legislation.

Responding to Trump’s move, the secretary general of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, said the order “sends the message that Israel is above the law and the universal principles of international justice”.

“Today’s executive order is vindictive. It is aggressive. It is a brutal step that seeks to undermine and destroy what the international community has painstakingly constructed over decades, if not centuries: global rules that are applicable to everyone and aim to deliver justice for all,” she added.

Other activists said sanctioning court officials would have a chilling effect and run counter to US interests in other conflict zones where the court is investigating.

“Victims of human rights abuses around the world turn to the international criminal court when they have nowhere else to go, and President Trump’s executive order will make it harder for them to find justice,” said Charlie Hogle, staff attorney with American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project.

“The order also raises serious First Amendment concerns because it puts people in the United States at risk of harsh penalties for helping the court identify and investigate atrocities committed anywhere, by anyone.”

After ICC judges issued the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant in November, the court had been bracing itself for retaliatory moves by the Trump administration.

Officials at the court, which is headquartered in the Hague in the Netherlands, fear the sanctions could pose an existential threat to the judicial body, which was established in 2002 and has 125 member states which have ratified its founding statute.

Several ICC sources told the Guardian last month that sanctions against senior court figures would be difficult but manageable, but institution-wide sanctions would pose an existential threat to the judicial body as they would block its access to services it depends on to function.

The order signed by Trump on Thursday suggests the US will target specific individuals listed in an annex to document, however it was not immediately clear which individuals were included.

In 2020, under a separate but similar executive order, Trump imposed travel bans and asset freezes against the ICC’s former prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, who is Gambian, and one of her top officials.

The measures were launched in response to decisions made by Bensouda in war crimes investigations in Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories. At the time, Bensouda was conducting a preliminary inquiry into allegations of crimes committed by Israel’s armed forces and Hamas.

In 2021, Bensouda upgraded the case to a formal criminal investigation. The current prosecutor, Karim Khan, inherited the inquiry and later accelerated it after the Hamas-led 7 October attacks and Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza.

Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly gave Donald Trump a “golden pager” during their meeting in Washington DC this week, in an apparent reference to Israel’s deadly attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.

In photos circulating online, the golden pager can be seen mounted on a piece of wood, accompanied by a golden plaque that reads in black lettering: “To President Donald J. Trump, Our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Israeli media reported that the Israeli prime minister, who is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes, also gave the US president a regular pager.

The gift was reportedly a nod to Israel’s deadly operation last September against Hezbollah, during which thousands of handheld pager beeper devices and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah detonated simultaneously across Lebanon.

The explosions killed at least 37 people, including children as young as nine years old, and left thousands wounded.

An Israeli official told the Associated Press that upon receiving the golden pager from Netanyahu, Trump, responded: “That was a major operation.”

According to a photo shared on Instagram by Yair Netanyahu, Netanyahu’s son, Trump gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of the two of them. Trump wrote on the photo: “To Bibi, A great leader!”

Netanyahu met with Trump on Tuesday on a visit which was rapidly overshadowed by Trump’s apparently off-the-cuff suggestion that the US would “take over” Gaza and resettle the Palestinian population elsewhere.

Donald Trump has restated his proposal to take over Gaza amid widespread opposition – even from his own supporters – saying the territory would be “turned over” to the US by Israel after it concludes its military offensive against Hamas.

Trump reinforced his commitment to the idea in a rambling post on his Truth Social network on Thursday, even as it emerged that the proposal – announced without warning during a White House visit by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister – was purely his own and had not been subject to detailed discussion with aides.

“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” he wrote.

“The Palestinians … would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free. No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed!”

The post was Trump’s response to broad condemnation of his original announcement on Tuesday, when he said the coastal territory could be turned into a “Riviera of the Middle East” after the 2.3 million Palestinians living there were left to live in other countries.

The suggestion produced shock waves across the Middle East and prompted a warning from the UN secretary general, António Guterres, against “any form of ethnic cleansing”. It also met resistance among the president’s “Make America Great Again” (Maga) base and Republican senators, some of whom stated bluntly that they would not go along with it.

Trump’s latest statement came after the White House appeared to hurriedly retreat from the idea under a hail of criticism. It emerged that Trump had discussed it with few aides before publicly announcing it, while no feasibility studies had been conducted by the state department or the Pentagon, as is customary with major foreign policy initiatives.

No working groups had been set up to examine details. Nor had studies been commissioned to assess how many US troops might need to be deployed to defuse huge quantities of unexploded ordnance.

Defence officials, who may be called upon to occupy and secure the territory as it is rebuilt, said they first heard about the idea when Trump announced it. The Pentagon has received no formal request to draft a plan for troop deployment, the Wall Street Journal reported.

No consideration appeared to have been given over how to persuade the Palestinian population to move elsewhere. Amid accusations that the proposal amounted to an endorsement of “ethnic cleansing” and could constitute a war crime, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, issued a statement on Wednesday insisting that the relocation would be “temporary” – a qualification unlikely to appease the inhabitants of Gaza, many of whom are themselves descendants of displaced refugees.

Trump reportedly seized on the idea following a recent visit to Gaza by Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy and a billionaire property developer, who told him that it was “uninhabitable” after the large-scale destruction wreaked by Israel’s military bombardment.

The proposal contradicts his publicly stated opposition to US intervention in the Middle East, for which he has criticised past administrations.

While Republicans have publicly applauded Trump’s expansionist foreign policy aspirations since taking office – including proposals to buy Greenland and seize the Panama Canal – there is much less enthusiasm for an involvement in Gaza.

“We love the president, but our focus in the War Room is East Palestine, not Palestine,” Steve Bannon, his former aide and one of his most vocal cheerleaders, told his War Room podcast on Wednesday, referring to a town in Ohio that suffered a serious pollution outbreak following a 2023 accident involving a train carrying hazardous waste.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator for South Carolina and another Trump ally, said all his Senate colleagues opposed sending US troops to Gaza.

“All I can say is I want to destroy Hamas, but I’ve been on the phone with Arabs all day. That approach I think will be very problematic. The idea of Americans going in on the ground in Gaza is a nonstarter for every senator,” he said.

The Hill quoted another Republican senator – who requested anonymity to discuss the mood of his colleagues – as saying: “The concern is who’s responsibility is it to rebuild Gaza? I think the reaction of most Americans, me included, is ‘not ours’. I think that’s the bottom line.”

Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel under Barack Obama, said the idea was dangerous even if it was unlikely to reach fruition.

“The danger is that extremists within the Israeli government and terrorists of various stripes will take it literally and seriously, and start to act on it,” he told the New York Times. “It could imperil the further release of hostages, put a target on the back of US personnel and undercut prospects of a Saudi-Israel normalisation deal.”

International outrage in recent days has focused on Donald Trump’s proposal that the US take “ownership” of Gaza, and that more than two million Palestinians be displaced to allow the territory to be transformed from “a demolition site” into a “riviera” in the Middle East.

In Jordan and Egypt, the demand that both countries accept huge numbers of Palestinians from Gaza – potentially on a permanent basis – has prompted equal concern. Leaders of both countries immediately rejected the proposal, and the Jordanian king, Abdullah II, and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, are heading to Washington in an attempt to convince Trump to change course.

“They are terrified that an Israeli policy of population transfer will actually become real,” said Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow of the Middle East programme at the Chatham House thinktank in London.

Abdullah and Sisi know that they are vulnerable to Trump’s trademark transactional style of geopolitics as their countries’ economies and security depend heavily on huge levels of US aid and trade.

Jordan accepted large numbers of displaced Palestinians in 1948 during the wars surrounding the foundation of Israel, and in 1967 when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. A large proportion of Jordan’s population – probably more than half – is of Palestinian origin, with many still classed as refugees.

Katrina Sammour, an independent Amman-based analyst, said: “It would be a repeat trauma of an already traumatised people. The Nakba [the displacement of 1948] is still very fresh in the collective memory of the Arab people.”

The role, presence and future of Palestinians in Jordan is one of the country’s most politically sensitive issues.

In 1970, armed factions of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation came close to wresting control of the kingdom from the current king’s father, Hussein. Though a repeat is highly unlikely, the events 55 years ago have not been forgotten.

Jordanian officials have been warning of the consequences of displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the war, as violence there has increased and Israeli settlements have expanded. An effort to force Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan – long an ambition of Israel’s right wing – would be a red line regarded as a “declaration of war” by their militarily powerful neighbour, the officials have said.

“The Jordanians are very worried that what happens in Gaza [could open] the door to the annexation [by Israel] of the West Bank,” Quilliam said.

Authorities in Jordan have faced months of domestic protests calling for stronger measures in support of Palestinians, and any move to comply with Trump’s demands would be seen as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. But Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel and close military and economic ties with the US. It also receives massive and vital financial aid from Washington, giving Trump significant leverage. Officials in Amman privately refer to the “balancing act” required by the kingdom.

“The questions of who counts as Jordanian and what it means to be Jordanian are highly combustible,” said Alia Brahimi, a regional expert at the Atlantic Council. “So there’s the demographic issue, but also the fact that Trump is drawing attention to King Abdullah’s ties to Israel and his alliance with and dependence on the US. Both matters have the very real potential to destabilise the Jordanian monarchy.”

Another issue is practical. The Jordanian economy has suffered through the war and public services are stretched to breaking point. Security services have struggled to contain Islamist extremists, while support for more moderate Islamists has apparently surged.

Sammour said: “A plan like this needs years of preparation … It could be a security nightmare, and Jordan would be seen as betraying the Palestinian cause.”

In Cairo, security is a major concern, especially in the highly sensitive zone of the Sinai desert where some have suggested vast refugee camps could be built. Egypt has refused to allow Palestinians in Gaza to flee into its territory during the 16-month war there, fearing a massive and destabilising influx that could become permanent.

Brahimi said: “Amongst a forcibly displaced population there are always going to be militants, whether Hamas or new groups looking to stand up for a new generation of brutalised and disenfranchised Palestinians. If they were to operate from Egyptian soil this would endanger and likely upend Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, but it would also energise and embolden local militant groups that are opposed to the Egyptian regime.”

Egypt also has deep economic problems, despite receiving vast amounts of aid from the US and elsewhere. “Egypt is a huge country but this would come with a huge … economic cost,” said Quilliam. “The Egyptian economy already has massive problems.”

Security services in Egypt struggle to keep a lid on discontent and officials fear new instability could lead to another mass protest movement like in 2011. Brahimi said: “As with King Abdullah of Jordan, there’s the potential for political calamity too, in that neither Arab leader can afford to be complicit in the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Frankly, Trump has given voice to the worst nightmares of the leaderships in Amman and Cairo.”

Trump appears to disagree. In the press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the US president said Abdullah and Sisi would come around to his proposal and “open their hearts [to] give us the kind of land that we need to get this done and people can live in harmony and in peace”.

A former Assad regime military officer who defected with a trove of evidence exposing the torture and killing of thousands has called on the US to repeal a raft of sanctions imposed on Syria, in an interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday.

The military officer, known only by the codename “Caesar” until now, also revealed his identity as Farid Nada al-Madhan, the head of the judicial department for the military police in Damascus.

Even in exile, Madhan had previously only used the pseudonym to protect his identity and those of his relatives, appearing in public only in an iconic blue hoodie that obscured his face, fearful of reprisals.

Madhan was a military photographer responsible for documenting the bodies of Syrians killed by the Assad regime, many brutally tortured to death. For two years, he smuggled USB drives filled with photographs out of Assad’s security branches, documenting the deaths of at least 6,786 people in detention.

To do so, Madhan risked arrest by regime and opposition forces.

“I was hiding images in my clothes, bread bags and on my person, for fear of being searched at checkpoints,” Madhan said on Thursday. Because he worked for the security services but lived in an area controlled by the Syrian Free Army, a rebel group, he created a fake civilian ID for himself in order to pass through opposition checkpoints.

At one point, he said he was recognised by an opposition soldier at a checkpoint. The soldier, who he had hired before as a handyman in his house, did not stop Madhan despite his status as a regime officer. The incident left him shaken nonetheless.

In 2013, Madhan decided he had collected enough evidence and endured enough risk, and took the decision to defect. He fled to Jordan and then flew to Qatar, where he worked with a law firm to use the smuggled photos to create accountability for the Assad regime’s crimes.

The photos, first revealed in 2014, were the first wide-spread documentation of the Assad regime’s brutal detention system, put into overdrive to quash the country’s 2011 revolution. According to Human Rights Watch, the 6,786 victims documented by Madhan came from just five intelligence branches in Damascus.

According to Madhan, at the beginning of the Syrian revolution, about 10 to 15 bodies would be brought into the security branches where he worked. By 2013, the number had increased to about 50 bodies a day. Most had “cardiac arrest” listed as the cause of death, which came to be known throughout the course of the war as a euphemism for death by torture.

Rights groups estimate the total number of detainees by the Assad regime at about 136,000. After rebels opened Assad’s prisons during their lightning offensive that culminated in the fall of the regime on 8 December, about 100,000 prisoners remained missing.

The revelations of the photographs led to the US “Caesar Act” in 2019, which imposed sanctions on Syrian officials and any other person who engaged in “significant transactions” with the Assad regime. Though the US government said the sanctions were targeted in nature, experts have long said that they have had a chilling effect on the Syrian economy, largely affecting ordinary civilians.

The new authorities in Damascus, led by the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, previously known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, have called for the lifting of US sanctions. The US has eased sanctions with a six-month waiver on certain humanitarian sectors, while the EU said it is waiting to see if Syria’s new rulers will protect minorities and create an inclusive government.

In addition to calling for the lifting of sanctions on Syria, Madhan said that he hoped that the new government in Damascus would open “national courts that will prosecute and hold perpetrators of war crimes accountable”.

Moscow has welcomed the impending dissolution of USAid, joining a chorus of strongman leaders declaring victory over an organisation they have long portrayed as a vehicle of American political interference.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Thursday described USAid as “anything but an aid, development and assistance agency” and instead branded it a “mechanism for changing regimes, political order [and] state structure”.

For authoritarian leaders worldwide, the agency’s dismantling represents a potential retreat of American democratic influence.

In Hungary, the Trump-allied prime minister, Viktor Orbán – fresh from December meetings with Trump and Elon Musk – celebrated what he termed the end of “globalist Soros” organizations.

El Salvador’s leader, Nayib Bukele, joined in, accusing the agency of funding “opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas and destabilizing movements”.

In Belarus, that country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, framed Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze as a response to his calls for a “reset” of bilateral relations.

Nicaragua’s state media, controlled by the family of the president, Daniel Ortega, declared that “Trump turned off the faucet” for what they labeled “terrorists”.

Venezuela’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, announced plans to investigate the agency, alleging that the “primary elections of the Venezuelan opposition were paid by the USAid”.

And in Azerbaijan, authorities had already pre-emptively refused to renew their cooperation agreement, explicitly challenging the agency’s political motivations.

USAid’s budget is estimated at about $43bn of the US federal budget, and the funding freeze marks a potentially seismic shift in global soft power dynamics.

The response from authoritarian regimes stood in sharp contrast to that of relief workers who warned that the cuts could rapidly lead to humanitarian and political crises.

Aid organisations have warned of the risk of escalating disease and famine along with disastrous repercussions in areas such as family planning and girls’ education.

In Uganda, where USAid provides more than $500m annually in life-saving support, that country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, met with the US ambassador in late January in anticipation of the cuts. In Belarus, organizations like Honest People, which has worked to counter state propaganda, face immediate closure and may soon lay off more than a dozen staffers.

“Cutting funding to these essential efforts sends the wrong signal to dictatorships and undermines the brave individuals fighting for freedom,” Thor Halvorssen, founder of New York-based Human Rights Foundation, which does not receive US government funding, told the Associated Press. “These particular investments should not just be restored – they should be prioritized.”

The controversy is sparking institutional pushback in the US, with the Congressional Research Service on Monday joining Democrats in questioning Trump’s authority to shutter the agency.

But the question of who – or what – can fill the void is still up for grabs. The agency’s annual $1.9bn in food aid and crucial health initiatives are now in flux, and it is unlikely European governments will fully compensate for the lost support. For that reason, some analysts and experts are looking at China.

Some Republican leaders in Washington, like the Mississippi senator Roger Wicker, are also warning that dismantling the agency could hand China a major strategic victory in its quest for global influence, particularly in Africa and South America.

“Things are happening fast,” Wicker told reporters. “We need an aid program to match the Chinese effort, but it needs to be done in a way that the policymakers of the United States have decided ought to be done.”

United States Federal Election Commission commissioner and chair Ellen Weintraub said on Thursday she received a letter from Donald Trump that purports to fire her but added that the action was illegal.

In a post on X, Weintraub attached the January 31 letter signed by Trump which said: “You are hereby removed as a member of the Federal Election Commission, effective immediately.”

Since taking office last month, Trump, a Republican, has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants and top officials at agencies in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

“There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners – this isn’t it,” Weintraub, a Democrat, said in her post.

“I’ve been lucky to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing any time soon,” she added.

The FEC has more than 300 employees, with six commissioners at the top. The FEC’s vice-chair, James Trainor, is a Republican.

Weintraub has served as a commissioner on the FEC since 2002, according to the FEC website. It says she has “served as a consistent voice for meaningful campaign-finance law enforcement and robust disclosure”.

FEC commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

By law, no more than three commissioners can represent the same political party, and at least four votes are required for any official commission action, the FEC website says.

Thailand will begin giving birth control to a small number of wild female elephants this year, as the country struggles with the growing problem of human-elephant conflict.

Asian elephants have been classified as endangered since 1986. But Thai authorities say that conservation efforts mean the country’s population is growing at a rate of 8% each year, overwhelming its depleted forests. This has caused the animals to increasingly stray into nearby populated areas, causing damage to farmland, homes and even deaths.

The proposal to use birth control is controversial, with some campaigners arguing that not enough testing has been carried out to detect the long term impact on the animals. Contraceptives have been used on wild African elephants in South Africa.

A trial was carried out using the birth control SpayVac on seven domesticated Thai elephants last year, and officials say it had no negative effects. It will be administered to wild elephants by dart injection, usually fired into a large muscle such as the hip or front leg.

Dr Supakit Vinitpornsawan, director of the centre to help people affected by wildlife at the department of national parks (DNP), said birth control would be given to about 20 wild female elephants who have already had calves, and it would last seven years.

Veterinarians would closely monitor the selected elephants, Supakit said. “We have to check them physically, and also check the hormone level by collecting the elephants’ blood. We want to check if the hormone is stable during the seven years, and in the long term, how it affects the elephant.”

The aim was not to stop the elephants from reproducing completely, but to pause reproduction in some animals, and it will be used alongside other measures to control human-animal conflict], he added.

Giving birth control to elephants was a sensitive issue, said Supakit, not only because of their endangered status, but also because of cultural importance in Thailand. “The elephant is our national animal, and a symbol of Thailand as well. It’s deep in our history.”

Thailand has up to 4,422 wild elephants, about half of which live in five forest areas that have become increasingly crowded as their population has grown. The biggest problem area is the Eastern Forest complex, which spans five provinces in eastern Thailand, and is surrounded by agricultural land and industry.

Across Thailand, and Asia, humans have increasingly expanded into forest areas, fragmenting the elephants’ traditional habitats, and often disrupting their access to resources. For communities in these areas, coexisting is a delicate and dangerous struggle. Conflict between animals and people can be financially devastating for humans, and distressing and – at worst – deadly for both species.

Last year, 4,700 incidents were recorded involving elephants from the Eastern Forest, among them, the deaths of 19 people. The incidents also included 594 cases of damaged farmland, 67 cases of damaged property and 22 injuries to local people, according to the DNP.

Human developments have not only taken away the elephants’ traditional habitat but also diverted resources such as water away from the forest, pushing elephants to wander outside, says Taan Wannagul, a researcher at the Eastern Elephants Education Centre. At the same time, farmers’ fields, full of sugar cane and other high-energy fruits, encourage them to venture outside the forest for food. “In the forest usually the elephant will take 22 hours to search for food … they usually walk 10km until they get full. But with this agriculture around they can be full in one hour. All the food is just right there,” said Taan.

There was a need to improve the living conditions of elephants in the forest, Taan said, as well as to help nearby farmers adapt. “Farmers maybe have to reduce the size of the farmland so there is less chance of the elephants causing damage,” he said.

Rubber farmers should be encouraged to work during the day, when there is less chance of encountering an elephant, he added. Trees are often tapped at night, when the weather is cooler, as this is most time efficient, but government compensation could help them to switch working patterns.

“The rights of the animal and the rights of the humans should be balanced,” he said.

Birth control is one of several methods that Thailand is employing to try to prevent human-elephant conflict. It also deploys patrol officers and volunteer networks who watch out for elephants that have strayed into populated areas, builds obstacles such as fences, and creates safe zones for elephants that are frequently straying into human areas. Compensation is offered to people whose properties and farms have been damaged.

Some have argued that the land surrounding forest areas that has been developed by humans should be reclaimed. But this would be a very difficult task in areas where industry and communities have already been established, said Supakit.

The DNP has held public hearings on the proposed use of birth control, and expects to administer it before the end of the year.

A former interpreter was sentenced on Thursday to nearly five years in prison for stealing $17m from Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, according to local media reports.

Ippei Mizuhara, the one-time translator and de facto manager of Ohtani, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the punishment prosecutors had sought, and also ordered by US district judge John Holcomb to pay restitution of over $18m, the City News Service reported.

Mizuhara, 39, pleaded guilty to felony bank fraud and subscribing to a false tax return last year, according to his plea deal previously filed in US district court in Los Angeles.

Mizuhara was accused of embezzling nearly $17mfrom a bank account of Ohtani’s that Mizuhara had helped open in Phoenix in 2018, and transferring the funds without Ohtani’s knowledge to an illegal bookmaking operation to cover Mizuhara’s gambling debts.

Announcing the original bank fraud charge last year, former US attorney E Martin Estrada stressed there was nothing to suggest wrongdoing by Ohtani, who has said he was an unwitting victim of theft and has never bet on baseball or knowingly paid a bookmaker.

According to prosecutors, Mizuhara began gambling with an illegal sports book in late 2021 and lost substantial sums.

To cover his debts, Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani over the phone on more than two dozen occasions to deceive bank employees into authorizing wire transfers from Ohtani’s account, prosecutors said. Ohtani signed a record $700m, 10-year contract to join the Dodgers last season, becoming the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball.

The 30-year-old’s talents as a slugger and a pitcher have earned him comparisons to Babe Ruth.

A former interpreter was sentenced on Thursday to nearly five years in prison for stealing $17m from Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, according to local media reports.

Ippei Mizuhara, the one-time translator and de facto manager of Ohtani, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the punishment prosecutors had sought, and also ordered by US district judge John Holcomb to pay restitution of over $18m, the City News Service reported.

Mizuhara, 39, pleaded guilty to felony bank fraud and subscribing to a false tax return last year, according to his plea deal previously filed in US district court in Los Angeles.

Mizuhara was accused of embezzling nearly $17mfrom a bank account of Ohtani’s that Mizuhara had helped open in Phoenix in 2018, and transferring the funds without Ohtani’s knowledge to an illegal bookmaking operation to cover Mizuhara’s gambling debts.

Announcing the original bank fraud charge last year, former US attorney E Martin Estrada stressed there was nothing to suggest wrongdoing by Ohtani, who has said he was an unwitting victim of theft and has never bet on baseball or knowingly paid a bookmaker.

According to prosecutors, Mizuhara began gambling with an illegal sports book in late 2021 and lost substantial sums.

To cover his debts, Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani over the phone on more than two dozen occasions to deceive bank employees into authorizing wire transfers from Ohtani’s account, prosecutors said. Ohtani signed a record $700m, 10-year contract to join the Dodgers last season, becoming the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball.

The 30-year-old’s talents as a slugger and a pitcher have earned him comparisons to Babe Ruth.

Karla Sofía Gascón will not attend this weekend’s prestigious Goya awards as the fallout from the Spanish actor’s racist and Islamophobic social media posts continues with her being dropped by her publisher and criticised by prominent politicians.

Gascón – the star of Emilia Pérez and the first transgender woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar – is already understood to have been removed from the film’s campaigning materials by its studio, Netflix. Her comments have been described as “absolutely hateful” by the movie’s director, Jacques Audiard, while Gascón’s co-star, Zoe Saldana, has said the views expressed had saddened and disappointed her.

On Thursday, Spanish media reported that Gascón – who has apologised for the comments made in old posts on X – would not be attending Saturday’s Goya awards, which are Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars. It also emerged that Dos Bigotes, a publishing house specialising in LGBTQ+, gender and feminist themes, has dropped plans for a revised edition of a biographical novel that Gascón published in Mexico in 2018.

Dos Bigotes said it had told the actor of its decision on Monday, informing her that the sentiments aired in her posts were inconsistent with its commitment to “equality, inclusion and diversity”. However, the publisher said that while it obviously did not share the views Gascón had expressed, it had told her that “we believe that the passage of time, and the lessons that life and time teach us, can make us better”.

The previous day, two prominent leftwing Spanish politicians had weighed in on the controversy.

“I feel bad about Karla Sofía Gascón’s tweets,” said the culture minister, Ernest Urtasun. “They don’t reflect Spanish society, and it pains me to say it, because her [Oscar] candidacy was very important for the country. And those tweets have tarnished that.”

His colleague, the labour minister and deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, was asked about the matter during a radio interview.

“I was absolutely delighted when she was nominated because of the symbolism and the force of what she represents,” she told Cadena Ser. “When I read the tweets, which aren’t tweets but are reflections of what a person thinks, I was deeply upset.”

Although the recently unearthed social media posts – in which Gascón called George Floyd “a drug addict swindler” and said Islam was “becoming a hotbed of infection for humanity” – are thought to have destroyed her Oscar hopes, some have questioned the scale and ferocity of the backlash the actor faces.

In a column in El País on Wednesday, the writer and journalist Sergio del Molino argued that Gascón the actor, and Gascón the person ought to be considered separately, and that she shouldn’t be penalised come Oscar night.

“If the people at the Academy were convinced that Karla Sofía Gascón deserved an Oscar for her work on Emilia Pérez, there’s no reason why they should feel differently today,” he wrote. “No matter how idiotic, racist, insulting or in bad taste her tweets from years ago were, they were not part of her performance. And if they deemed that performance prize-worthy a week ago, they still should, because the film hasn’t changed.”

Another writer and journalist, Manuel Jabois, told Cadena Ser that “anyone who doesn’t feel a bit sorry for her has a problem”, while acknowledging that there was a debate to be had about how to separate Gascón’s “artistic talent from her disgusting and racist” opinions.

“And there’s another debate about how far the rejection, or cancellation – by Netflix, by colleagues, by the government of this country – can go,” said Jabois. “No matter how gross I find her 10-year-old opinions, I condemn the absurd cruelty and the absurd solitude to which she’s been condemned.”

A British conman who featured in a Netflix documentary has been sentenced to six years in prison by a French court for deliberately ramming two police officers with his car as he attempted a getaway.

Robert Hendy-Freegard, 53, nicknamed the Puppet Master because of his career as a serial swindler, made his escape after injuring the gendarmes at his home in the Creuse in central France.

He was arrested in Belgium and extradited to France, where he has been in jail since 2022.

Hendy-Freegard was convicted and given a life sentence in the UK in 2005 for kidnapping and fraud, including cheating a number of women out of more than £1m.

He had convinced his victims he was a secret agent for MI5 and was on the run from terrorist organisations. He was freed in 2009 after his conviction for kidnapping was overturned by an appeal court.

Some time around 2015 he moved to a remote house in the village of Vidaillat, in the Creuse, and established himself as a dog breeder with his British partner, Sandra Clifton.

When workplace and animal welfare inspectors, accompanied by gendarmes, visited the property on 25 August 2022 to inspect the kennels after complaints from neighbours that he was running an illegal business, Hendy-Freegard allegedly drove off in his Audi A3, hitting the officers in the process.

A female officer was reportedly carried 100 yards on the vehicle’s bonnet, broke her nose and was signed off work for 21 days, while her male colleague was signed off for six days.

Hendy-Freegard was arrested two weeks later after his car was stopped by Belgian police on the E40 motorway at Grand Bigard near Brussels. He was originally accused of attempted murder but this was later changed to a charge of violence against public officials with aggravating circumstances.

Hendy-Freegard, who appeared in court in Guéret under the name David Hendy, denied deliberately hitting the two gendarmes.

The court heard that while on the run he sent a message to a French gendarme he knew, saying: “I just wanted to say that I apologise to your colleagues who jumped in front of me. I’m horrified that they might have thought I wanted to murder them.”

He told the court he had been upset that day because Clifton had announced she was leaving him. “First of all, I’m sorry I didn’t stop. But I panicked … I didn’t stop because I’m a human being with emotions,” he said.

He blamed the Netflix documentary for causing distress and psychological problems. “There are always two sides to every story. I made mistakes that day, but you have no idea what I went through, even though I’m not a physical victim. But none of this would have happened if the Netflix documentary hadn’t been shown,” he said.

He told the hearing he and Clifton had moved to France after she saw an advertisement for the property in a remote location in Vidaillat. Asked what income he had at the time, he replied: “I’d need to clarify that point.”

The court heard that the property, where the couple ran a business breeding beagles, was dilapidated and Hendy-Freegard said problems caused by Brexit had prevented them from renovating it.

While at the kennels, the officers discovered Clifton living at the property. Neighbours had previously alerted the authorities about a woman they thought was being held in “awful conditions” at the house, but as the woman told police there was no cause for concern, inquiries were dropped.

Clifton is believed to have since returned to the UK and declined to press charges.

Hendy-Freegard, born in 1971 in Worksop, was the central figure in Netflix’s 2022 documentary The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman and also inspired the film Rogue Agent, a fictional story starring James Norton and Gemma Arterton.

The state prosecutor, Alexandra Pethieu, had requested a seven-year prison sentence, saying the escape attempt resulted in “an appalling scene worthy of Mad Max”.

During an earlier hearing, Hendy-Freegard’s lawyer, Juliette Magne-Gandois, said he had “always denied any intent to kill anyone”, a charge carrying a sentence of up to 30 years. Agence France-Presse reported that Magne-Gandois had since stopped representing him.

During his London trial, the court was told Hendy-Freegard lived by the motto: “Lies have to be big to be convincing.” One of his victims recalled him taking her from a supposed “safe house” with a bucket over her head, having to hide in cupboards to avoid visitors, and spending three weeks in a locked bathroom with little to eat.

The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has accused the US of peddling a “quite simply intolerable falsehood” about the Panama canal, as Donald Trump’s pledge to “take back” the waterway continued to poison relations between the two countries and cause alarm around Latin America.

The US state department claimed late on Wednesday the Central American country had agreed to no longer charge US government vessels to pass through its canal – a move that would supposedly save Washington millions of dollars a year.

But the Panama Canal Authority – which has found itself at the eye of the diplomatic storm generated by Trump’s highly controversial stance – denied that claim, announcing that it had made no “adjustments” to its tolls or frees.

On Thursday, Mulino rebuffed the state department’s assertion in even more emphatic terms, telling reporters: “I am extremely surprised by yesterday’s state department announcement because they are making important statements … based on a falsehood, and this is intolerable, quite simply intolerable.”

Later on Thursday, Mulino later announced that he was due to speak to Trump by phone on Friday.

The falling-out flared four days after Trump repeated the baseless claim that the US had “foolishly” returned the US-built canal to Panamanian control in 1999 only for it to be taken over by China. “And we’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen,” Trump warned on Sunday.

As the US president spoke, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was delivering a similar message to Mulino in person, during a five-country tour of Latin America which began in Panama.

According to the state department, Rubio told Mulino that Trump believed “the current position of influence and control of the Chinese Communist Party over the Panama Canal area is a threat to the canal” and was “unacceptable”. Rubio added: “Absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights.”

Responding to Mulino’s comments on Thursday, Rubio said: “The United States has a treaty obligation to protect the Panama canal if it comes under attack. That treaty obligation would have to be enforced by the armed forces of the United States, particularly the US navy. I find it absurd that we would have to pay fees to transit a zone that we are obligated to protect in a time of conflict.”

Most analysts believe US military action to reclaim the canal by force is unlikely, although George HW Bush’s 1989 invasion to depose Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega suggests it is not impossible.

One of the main motivations behind Trump’s rhetoric appears to be pressuring Panama – and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean – to slow down China’s economic push into a region the US has long regarded as its “back yard”. Beijing’s regional footprint has grown massively over the past 25 years with China overtaking the US as South America’s largest trading partner.

Trump’s anti-China strategy may be paying off. On Thursday, Panama’s president announced that his country’s diplomats had informed their Chinese counterparts that the Central American country was ending its involvement in China’s “Belt and Road” initiative. The scheme is a trillion-dollar-plus development campaign through which China’s leader, Xi Jinping, hopes to boost economic growth – not to mention Beijing’s geopolitical influence – across the globe by building massive amounts of infrastructure, from railways in Thailand and Ethiopia to a recently opened “mega port” in Peru.

On Wednesday a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Lin Jian, condemned how the US had “made irresponsible remarks on the Panama canal issue, and intentionally distorted, attacked and mischaracterized relevant cooperation”. “Belt and Road” initiative cooperation had “achieved fruitful outcomes” between Panama and China, Lin claimed.

Greek civil protection authorities have declared a state of emergency on Santorini as natural disaster experts voice mounting fears over the “intense” seismic activity that has rattled the island.

The emergency measures were declared by the island’s town hall hours after seismologists recorded a 5.2-magnitude earthquake – the most powerful tremor to be felt on Santorini since the first of an estimated 7,700 temblors were registered last week.

The measures, under which the army is expected to take a more active role in crisis management, will be in effect until 3 March when the Christian Orthodox nation marks the beginning of Lent.

“It’s what we need to deal with this situation and we requested that it be enforced,” said Santorini’s mayor, Nikos Zorzos.

With experts speaking of a geological phenomenon that could last weeks, fatigued local people continued to leave the island, likening the exodus to “an unofficial mass evacuation”.

More than 12,000 people have fled by boat and plane since the tremors intensified at the weekend, with few tourists now believed to be on the island.

By Thursday Santorini’s main hilltop settlement – the biggest draw on an island that attracted 3.5 million tourists last year – resembled a ghost town, its shops shuttered and its narrow streets tapered off by police fearing more rock slides.

“The vibe has definitely changed since the earthquake last night,” said Catherine Wilson, a New Yorker who had spent three days on the island before flying back to Athens on Thursday. “For the first time you could see locals, like the people running my hotel, being unnerved by it all. Definitely, there’s a fear about this having a long term impact on tourism.”

Government officials said the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, would visit the island on Friday in what was described as “a show of solidarity”. Others said the move underscored the seriousness of the situation.

Late on Thursday trucks could be seen disembarking from ferries loaded with generators. In a further sign of emergency services being relocated to the island, it was announced that social workers and psychologists would be dispatched to Santorini.

Experts are divided as to whether Wednesday night’s 5.2-magnitude earthquake is a precursor to a much more powerful tremor – one that could trigger a tsunami – or a sign that the seismic buildup is diminishing.

“We are not yet in a position to say that we are seeing any evidence that would lead to the sequence slowly coming to a conclusion,” Vassilis K Karastathis, a seismologist and director of research at the National Observatory of Athens, told reporters. “We are still in the middle of the road, we haven’t seen any easing, any sign that it’s heading towards a regression.”

It might not be the world-ending apocalypse foretold in the Netflix drama Don’t Look Up, but astronomers have significantly upped the odds of a direct hit from a giant asteroid currently hurtling towards Earth.

According to Nasa’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (Cneos), the odds of a strike in 2032 by the space rock that goes by the somewhat unassuming name 2024 YR are calculated to be 2.3% – a one-in-43 chance.

Barely a week ago, the European Space Agency (Esa) gave the asteroid a 1.3% chance of hitting the planet on 22 December that year, the day it will make its closest approach to Earth. Or, phrased another way, it had an almost 99% probability of passing by without incident.

At up to 300ft (90 metres) in width, according to Nasa-funded skywatchers who spotted it from a telescope in Chile just before new year, the object is roughly the same size as the Tunguska asteroid that flattened about 830 square miles (2,150 sq km) of remote Siberian forest when it exploded in 1908.

Astronomers, however, are urging Earth dwellers not to panic, even though 2024 YR4 has rocketed to the top of official impact risk lists on both sides of the Atlantic, and has the rare rating of three on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale that ranges from a no-risk zero to a civilization-ending 10.

Fluctuations in the chances of a strike so far out from an object’s arrival are common, and in a YouTube video entitled “How asteroids go from threat to no sweat”, Esa explains that the likelihood of 2024 YR4 ever striking the planet will drop to virtually zero once updated data on speed and trajectory is received in the coming weeks and months.

The planetary defense coordination office of Nasa, the US space agency, agrees.

“There have been several objects in the past that have risen on the risk list and eventually dropped off as more data have come in,” researcher Molly Wasser said in a statement.

“New observations may result in reassignment of this asteroid to zero as more data come in.”

Colin Snodgrass, professor of planetary astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, told the Guardian last week: “Most likely this one will pass by harmlessly.

“It just deserves a little more attention with telescopes until we can confirm that. The longer we follow its orbit, the more accurate our future predictions of its trajectory become.”

Other recent similar scares would appear to reinforce the message.

The asteroid 99942 Apophis, discovered in 2004 and larger than the Eiffel Tower, was once given a rating of four on the Torino scale, but was eventually calculated to be no threat to Earth on any of its close passes for at least the next 100 years.

Yet even if 2024 YR4 continues on towards Earth with a high chance of impact, the success of Nasa’s Dart mission in 2022, in which a spacecraft was deliberately crashed into an asteroid the size of a football stadium and altered its trajectory, gives grounds for optimism for the future of humanity.

“This asteroid is of the scale that a mission like Dart could be effective, if required, so we have the technology and it has been tested,” Snodgrass said.